New Mobile Phones too advanced for users?

Well, that is according to the findings of US based consultancy firm Mformation who found that 85% of those surveyed reporting they had been frustrated with the complexity of getting a new mobile phone up and running. Furthermore, 61% of the people questioned said that they would stop using an application if they could not get it working straight away. Can this be true? Are we really a bunch of technophobes baffled by the technology of our mobile phones? Personally i would like to defend the British public against this accusation and say NO!

Firstly, 4000 people were surveyed in both the UK and the US for this research; a drop in the ocean considering there are over 45 million mobile phone numbers registered in the UK alone meaning that a sample this small is hardly scientific. The US mobile phone market is still quite far behind the European market in terms of technology, with the Motorola V3 still one of the most popular phones available. I think you’d agree that anyone using a V3 might be slightly confused making the step up to a current phone. So are the US participants in this survey bringing the rest of us down? Perhaps this is a bit harsh but considering that 2 year contracts are the norm across the pond, mobile users in the US certainly don’t have the luxury of regular mobile phone upgrades meaning the difference in technologies found on their current phone and their next purchase could be vast.

But what evidence is there to prove that users in the UK are getting the most out of there phones? Mformation spokesperson Matthew Bancroft suggested “There is an enormous range of things modern phones are capable of doing but the paradox is that many people are not using these capabilities”. A fair assesment? Well, as previously covered on this blog, the iPhone was the fifth most popular camera used to upload pictures on social photo gallery site Flickr, outranking stand alone digital cameras, which proves that, far from baffling its users, the iPhone is being used for web browsing, social networking and file sharing. And on the subject of social networking, the big two names in the game Facebookand MySpace have both set up mobile friendly versions of their sites due to overwhelming demand from users. Still on the subject of the iPhone, surely the huge popularity of the App store is proof that mobile users are embracing new technologies and applications.

And what about new features on new phones, are these too complex for us? Well Manufacturers have clearly thought of this; Nokia include a help programme in all of their Symbian smartphones similar to that found on a Windows PC. Simply choose the action you wish to perform and you’ll be given a simple explanation of how to perform it. And in there latest range of touchscreen mobile phones Samsung include Widgets which are basically interactive shortcuts that sit on your home screen meaning you don’t have to trawl through menus to get what you’re after.

And, in an effort to encourage brand loyalty and ease the burden of getting your new phone just the way you like it, Nokia include switch software which lets you pair your old and new phone by Bluetooth an then pull all your contacts, messages, calendar entries and multimedia files over to the new phone.

So personally i have to disagree with the findings of this research and say that new phones are most definitely not too baffling for us. But what do you think? Could mobile phone manufacturers make it easier on us? What are your pet peeves when upgrading to a newer phone? Use the comments section below to get it all off your chest…